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Shore News Network

OCEAN COUNTY, NJ — With the summer heat pushing temperatures above 100 degrees, Ocean County Commissioners are voicing concerns over recurring power outages impacting residents, particularly the vulnerable senior community. Commissioner Frank Sadeghi highlighted an increase in complaints regarding blackouts and brownouts, noting that the assurances from Jersey Central Power & Light Company (JCP&L) have not been met.

According to Commissioner Sadeghi, despite the utility’s promises, their performance has fallen short, especially during critical high-demand periods. Ocean County, which sees its population more than double during the summer months due to tourism, is home to over 200,000 seniors, many of whom rely on electrically powered medical devices such as oxygen tanks and dialysis machines.

Sadeghi has proposed a meeting with the new president of JCP&L to address these persistent issues and to discuss proactive measures to prevent future service disruptions. Commissioner Virginia E. Haines also suggested that discussions should extend to JCP&L’s parent company, First Energy, to explore long-term solutions to the county’s power reliability problems.

Ocean County leaders expressed their determination to ensure that the utility company fulfills its responsibilities to residents, emphasizing that the recurring power issues are unacceptable and must be resolved promptly.

WJRZ

By Megan Moritz

On Wednesday, May 22, the Ocean County Board of Commissioners with its Division of Business Development and Tourism hosted their inaugural “Unlock the Ocean” ceremony in Lavallette. The event was organized as an honorary start to the summer tourism season.

Lavallette Mayor, Walter LaCicero, opened the event by thanking the Ocean County Board of Commissioners for choosing Lavallette as the first location for this inaugural event. He then gave the microphone to Commissioner Frank Sadeghi, who noted the perfect sunny weather for a morning at the beach, hoping that it’s a good omen for the rest of the season.

The US Navy had representatives at the event with 12 sailors looking on the add to the festivities.

The Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem were both performed before students from Lavallette Elementary School took the spotlight. They sang the song “How Far I’ll Go” from the Disney movie Moana, as well as signed the lyrics in American Sign Language. I thought this was a fantastic song choice being that the movie is based around the beach and ocean (in Hawaii).

After their performance, the Mayor and Commissioner brought the large “Ocean County Key” to the entrance of the beach to officially unlock the ocean.

Jersey Shore BlueClaws’s mascot, Buster, also aided in the ceremonial “unlocking”. The elementary students were excited to see Buster, as you could hear the gasps and chants for his name over the microphone as he arrived. The students gathered for a group photo with him.

Guests were welcome to take some gifts and refreshments available at the event’s end. These items included Ocean County Tourism frisbees and sand buckets, crumb cake from the local coffee shop, Lava Java, and also some nautical themed cookies made by students of the culinary arts program at the Ocean County Vocational Technical School.

Additional event photos can be found here!

You couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful morning in Lavallette to “unlock the ocean” and officially start the summer season at the Jersey Shore ahead of Memorial Day Weekend!

Ocean County News

In 2016, New Jersey’s gas tax stood at 14.5 cents per gallon – one of the nation’s lowest – a welcome anomaly in our otherwise punishing state tax code.

Within a year, a bipartisan gas tax increase raised the tax to over 37-cents per gallon, with an allowance for automatic increases baked into the law. We were told then that this increase – in exchange for the lowering of several other taxes – would sustain the state’s Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) for years to come.

We were sold a bill of goods.

Because on top of…

A new 15% fare hike for riders on NJ Transit trains and buses;

A three percent toll increase for drivers on the Parkway and Turnpike;

The largest annual increase in our property tax bills in the last six years;

And the Democrats breaking their promise not to raise taxes on businesses;

Now we are about to endure another increase in the state gas tax – pushing this regressive tax to over 50 cents per gallon by the end of this decade.

How much more pain can the working-class families, seniors, and small businesses in this state take?

Barring Governor Murphy coming to his senses, Trenton politicians will increase the gas tax by nearly 10-cents a gallon – and charge a fee on electric vehicles – over the next five years.

The move will increase taxes by roughly $2 billion dollars per year, putting our state’s gas tax on course to be one of the Top 5 highest gas taxes in the country.

My message to all the state legislators representing Ocean County in Trenton is simple: Enough! Do everything in your power to stop enabling these tax and spending policies!

Not only is it abusive to our residents but given the utter lack of investment in Ocean County’s critical infrastructure needs – like the widening of Route 9 – the people in our county shouldn’t be forced to pay one more penny in gas taxes to fund transportation and infrastructure improvements that largely don’t benefit us one bit.

Asbury Park Press

By Erik Larsen

TOMS RIVER – Ocean County Commissioner Frank Sadeghi is calling for “sweeping ethics reforms” in the county government and at Ocean County College, in the wake of an Asbury Park Press investigation into former OCC President Jon H. Larson’s extensive travel to the Middle East in the final years of his tenure.

“Former President Larson’s abuse of county resources is beyond embarrassing and we as a Board of Commissioners need to ensure it never happens again,” Sadeghi said. “Moreover, we expect the Board of Trustees at the college to be held accountable for failing to police the president and all other faculty and staff who joined these trips.”

The Press reported in January that the Larson administration spent more than $300,000 on lavish travel to the Middle East between 2016 and 2023, related to its now-failed bid to break into the online education market in Egypt, according to internal billing records obtained by the Press.

In response, Larson has said the accommodations were not extravagant and that the trips were necessary as part of his administration’s plan to focus on enrollment growth that shifted to new markets that he contends are in scarce supply in Ocean County alone.

Sadeghi said better safeguards are needed in county government and at the college to prevent future abuses in official travel. He has proposed a ban on first class or business travel by employees of the county college or county government when on official business; a cap on nightly lodging costs and per diem spending on meals and entertainment that aligned with U.S. State Department guidelines on official foreign travel and the U.S. General Services Administration guidelines on domestic travel.

“While I am open to discussion with my colleagues on the Board of Commissioners, the new college president and the Board of Trustees about my ideas, I have no intention of stopping at just talk,” Sadeghi said. “I am committed to enacting new reforms at the county college and in county government that protect taxpayers and tuition payers from having their dollars abused like this ever again.”

Larson’s successor, OCC President Pamela J. Monaco, who took office in July, has since ended the Middle East program.

While the county Board of Commissioners has no jurisdiction over the operation of the community college as Commissioner Virginia E. Haines pointed out at a recent board meeting, the commissioners do appoint almost all of its trustees and this year expect to appropriate $18 million in taxpayer aid to the college.

“Ocean County College appreciates the opportunity to work with the Commissioners on ways the college can align with all other county organizations in serving the public interest,” Monaco said in response to a request for comment for this story.

Monaco said the college has been extremely fortunate over the years to have strong working relationships with the county commissioners and its liaisons, particularly Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr., who died in 2018 (and for whom an academic building on campus is named) and now Haines.

Monaco said she would reach out to her fellow college presidents to learn what travel policies their institutions have in place, “and we will certainly begin discussions with our Board of Trustees and college community.”

Sadeghi, who took office in January, said he also wants to enact term limits for the college Board of Trustees and form a special committee made up of representatives from the county administration, the Board of Commissioners, the county general counsel and the county director of the Department of Employee Relations.

“In my research, it appears many of our ethics policies in the county haven’t been updated in years —and in some cases decades — and that lack of attention is preventing alignment with the best policies and practices across the state and in other states,” Sadeghi said. “By initiating a full review, we can give county taxpayers confidence that we are serious about not only running fiscally efficient government, but also government that adheres to the highest ethical standards.”

Lakewood News Network

Frustrated with the slow pace of work on the Cross Street widening project? So are the Ocean County commissioners.

At Wednesday’s commissioners’ meeting, Commissioners Frank Sadeghi and Jack Kelly ripped into JCP&L representative Robert Brice for the company’s failure to move its utility poles, which is holding up the whole project. Work was supposed to take a year; the county has been asking JCP&L to move the poles for three years. All other work is now done, and nothing can happen until the poles are moved.

The Ocean County Board of Commissioners have publicly scolded a representative of Jersey Central Power & Light for its role in the slow progress of a major road widening project planned in Lakewood.

“For the last four or five months, they’re at a standstill because they’re waiting for JCP&L to remove and relocate those (utility) poles,” Sadeghi said.

Brice blamed the delays on supply chain issues, but Sadeghi, who is a civil engineer and operates his own engineering firm, was having none of it. “I’ve noticed that once again, JCP&L has demonstrated that they don’t care about the needs of the people of Ocean County,” he said.

Brice then whined about the volume of work Ocean County has for the company. Of three “line shops” the company maintains in Ocean County, two were the busiest line shops in the company’s service area, he said. “Ocean County is — no surprise to anyone — is experiencing great growth and development on a monthly basis. We’ve put a lot of money and investments into Ocean County in the form of transition improvements, substation improvements, additional distribution improvements and smart meter improvements that are going on as we speak,” he said.

Commissioner Jack Kelly asked if JCP&L didn’t have enough poles, and Brice confirmed this. On Cross Street, 38 utility poles have to be replaced, he said.

“They’re transmission level poles,” Brice explained. “It’s not the regular poles that you see in your neighborhood. They’re thicker, they’re taller. They raise anywhere from 65 to 75 feet and they have to be hurricane rated. In addition, they have to be breakaway at the bottom. So it’s not as simple as going out, chopping down a nice tree and you know, putting it on the back of a truck and bringing—”

Kelly was not impressed. “But that’s what you do,” the commissioner snapped. “That’s your job. I don’t care how big they are. It’s your job to get those poles there.”

Kelly pointed out that the county gets blamed for the slow pace. “I don’t care how high they go in the air. That’s too long. We give you all the notice in the world of what we’re doing and we’re still not able to get what we need. And then I hear from the (Lakewood) mayor and from the community that the county is too slow: ‘You’re not doing your job.’ I can’t do my job until you help me. Buy some wood, build new ones!”

Brice replied that with a road widening project as with Cross Street, JCP&L does not order new utility poles until their own people see the design plans and specifications. Otherwise, the company would not know what specific type of poles to order.

“Yeah, that doesn’t make sense to me,” Sadeghi fired back. “You’re not dealing with a developer who buys a piece of property, wants to put in a new road, needs poles, and you’re at the mercy of whether that developer — depending upon what the market is — is going to proceed with that project or not. You’re dealing with the government of Ocean County, they’re telling you: ‘We’re going to do this work.’ So, the responsibility is on you.”

In any business, needs must be forecast and planned accordingly, Sadeghi said. JCP&L’s answer for the project delay on Cross Street is therefore “inexcusable,” he said.

“You don’t want to hear excuses, but I know you’ve encountered the same supply chain issues that we’ve encountered,” Brice said. “You’ve had trouble getting trucks, you’ve had trouble getting other equipment.”

“It never took me three years to get a truck,” Kelly shot back.

“Yeah,” Brice replied.

“Let me just say this to you,” Kelly said. “I don’t want to stand here and try to embarrass you in front of the whole audience. I would like to meet with you in my office, with the county engineer, and talk about this. And, not talk about what happened yesterday, let’s talk about what can happen tomorrow, because that’s what I’m really concerned about.”

Lakewood Alerts

In his first meeting as a member of the Board of Commissioners, newly installed Ocean County Commissioner Frank Sadeghi said that Route 9 should be upgraded to a four-lane roadway, adding that county officials can’t keep blaming the state for inaction on the issue.

Sadeghi noted that a drive of just a few miles on the portion of the 9 running through Lakewood and Toms River now takes 45 minutes “if you are lucky,” and that the Commissioners should be forging partnerships with local municipalities to demand that “the state of New Jersey live up to its responsibilities regarding the improvements to Route 9 as well as other state roadways.”

“Imagine if there was an Ocean County Improvement Authority where smaller townships, boards of education and fire districts could partner with, for their bonding needs,” he said. “In other counties, improvement authorities secure borrowing rates that smaller governing bodies could never dream of, allowing for capital improvements at lower cost to property taxpayers.”

He also urged his fellow commissioners to prepare the county for a massive increase in population in the coming decades, predicting that Ocean County would have 1 million residents by the year 2050.

Lakewood News Network

By Yeshaya Roth

At the Ocean County Board of Commissioners’ reorganization meeting, the board’s newest member, Frank Sadeghi, said the county was being too passive in the face of inadequate action by the state to address Route 9 congestion in Lakewood and Toms River. The county did not need to rest on its laurels while it waited for bureaucrats in Trenton to tackle the issue – in fact, may other counties quite effectively facilitate the efforts of their municipalities to achieve funding for such projects.

What Ocean County needs, according to Sadeghi, is an Improvement Authority. “Imagine if there was an Ocean County Improvement Authority where smaller townships, boards of education and fire districts could partner with, for their bonding needs,” Sadeghi argued. “In other counties, improvement authorities secure borrowing rates that smaller governing bodies could never dream of, allowing for capital improvements at lower cost to property taxpayers.”

A civil engineer by profession, Sadeghi believes the only solution for Route 9 is to transform the intolerably congested stretch of road from Lakewood to Berkeley into a four-lane highway. A 10-mile drive between Toms River and Lakewood should not take 45 minutes, he says, and that will be your experience “if you are lucky.”

Asbury Park Press

By Erik Larsen

TOMS RIVER – In one of his first votes as a newly sworn-in Ocean County commissioner, Frank Sadeghi made it clear he wasn’t always going to agree with his fellow Republicans.

In a 3-to-1 vote on Wednesday, Sadeghi dissented from the all-Republican board’s longstanding policy to assign department liaisons based on seniority on the five-member panel. He explained that voters do not care who has been on the board for 30 years or 10 years, or whether the oath of office had just been administered to them for the first time. In his opinion, professional expertise and experience in a particular field should trump personal preference when a commissioner is assigned oversight of a department.

“So, for that reason I’m voting no,” Sadeghi said as three of his colleagues looked on, stone-faced. Commissioner Jack Kelly had fallen ill this week and did not attend the annual organizational meeting of the board, which was so packed with onlookers that the crowd spilled out of the first floor meeting room and into the lobby of the county Administration Building.

Sadeghi, 66, of Island Heights, had already remarked in his inaugural comments on Wednesday that he sought to bring an independent mind to the office and would speak up when he thought the board could do a better job for the people of Ocean County.

He wasted no time in outlining his vision: Ocean County needed to better prepare for a population of one million people by 2050. The county government, he said, “needs to recognize that change and rise to meet the challenges in front of us with bold thinking and innovative solutions.

“We can’t afford to be reactive — rather — we need to think proactively and govern with vision,” Sadeghi said, calling for “a renaissance or rebirth of Ocean County.”

“We must recognize that the promise of our community relies on providing the education and training for our children and their children to compete in tomorrow’s global economy,” he said. “There is no higher priority for us as elected officials to ensure that our kids have a chance at a bright future; one they can find here in Ocean County, not in Florida or Arizona, or North Carolina. As an engineer and builder, there’s no one more committed to making an investment in the physical infrastructure of Ocean County, but I’m also committed wholeheartedly to investing in the intellectual infrastructure.”

He said Route 9 needed to be widened from a two-lane road to a four-lane highway, particularly in the central and northern parts of the county where a 10-mile drive between Toms River and Lakewood now takes 45 minutes “if you are lucky.”

He said the county government could not keep simply blaming the state government for inaction on the issue, and the board should seek partnerships with Lakewood, Toms River and Berkeley to demand that “the state of New Jersey live up to its responsibilities regarding the improvements to Route 9 as well as other state roadways.

“Imagine if there was an Ocean County Improvement Authority where smaller townships, boards of education and fire districts could partner with, for their bonding needs,” Sadeghi continued. “In other counties, improvement authorities secure borrowing rates that smaller governing bodies could never dream of — allowing for capital improvements at lower cost to property taxpayers.”

Sadeghi also criticized what he said were waiting lists of students who seek to enroll in the Ocean County Vocational Technical School District.

“What answer do we have for the parent of a young lady who is interested in enrolling in the Vo-Tech programs and she’s told that there’s a waiting list of over a hundred kids in front of her,” he said. “Not everyone can go to college and frankly, not everyone wants to. Ocean County should be a statewide leader in promoting the trades for our young people and encouraging them to further their education in a way that makes sense for them and their families.”

He also said that Ocean County Airport at Robert J. Miller Airpark in Berkeley had the potential to be expanded into a transportation hub for shipping companies such as Amazon or FedEx, where vocational students “could work with aviation and aerospace companies based at the airport — bringing good-paying jobs and economic investments to our county, while remaining in compliance with Pinelands’ rules and regulations.”

“These goals may seem like far-fetched ideas, but so was the idea that a young man still a teenager could leave his birth country with $70 in his pocket; land at JFK, work odd jobs, find a place to live, put himself through engineering school, start a family and a business, create hundreds of jobs and one day hold elected office,” Sadeghi said, referring to his own personal narrative.

Sadeghi immigrated alone to the United States from Iran as a teen in 1976 at the behest of his dying father’s wishes that he make a better life for himself in America, with the goal of eventually bringing his mother and his three siblings here too.

With only that $70 and the address of a distant relative on him, he soon found an apartment in the Bronx of the late 1970s and took on multiple jobs to support himself — working as a painter, a piano mover, a valet and a cook at a fast-food restaurant.

Later, Sadeghi became a U.S. citizen and put himself through school, graduating from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. He would go on to earn a graduate degree in city and regional planning from Rutgers University.

In 1993, he founded Morgan Engineering — which today employs more than 100 local residents — and where he remains the principal owner; responsible for project management and design of municipal, residential, commercial and industrial projects, all according to his biography from the county Division of Public Information.

Sadeghi previously served three terms on the Toms River Regional Board of Education.

A practicing Christian, Sadeghi attends both the Jesus is the Lord Fellowship Church in Toms River and the First United Methodist Church of Island Heights.

He has an adult son and daughter, and “his partner in life,” Lauren Plump, his significant other.

Also at the meeting Wednesday, Commissioner Barbara Jo Crea was appointed director of the board for 2024 (her first time in the center chair since she was elected in 2021). Crea said in her public remarks that she was committed to maintaining a stable county tax rate and in preserving the county’s AAA bond rating.

“For the last seven years, the county property tax rate has decreased,” Crea said. “I anticipate it will remain stable in 2024 or continue to decrease.”

The new director said she anticipated that the county’s new Homelessness Trust Fund she lobbied for last year would raise between $275,000 to $390,000 annually, which is primarily earmarked for programs to keep people from losing their homes.

After more than a decade of resistance to the concept, the Board of Commissioners joined 12 other New Jersey counties last spring in levying a $5 surcharge on most documents recorded with the county clerk’s office. The fees provide a continuous revenue stream to the trust fund.

After the meeting when Sadeghi was asked about his earlier public comments, he said he believed his professional credentials and experience as a civil engineer would have best served the county if he had been appointed as liaison to the Department of Engineering or the Finance Department, for example.

Instead, the most significant role he was assigned in his portfolio as a commissioner will be as liaison to the Board of Social Services and Department of Human Services — a role that traditionally goes to the last commissioner elected to the board.

During his campaign for commissioner, Sadeghi said many supporters said they welcomed someone with his background as a leader in county government.

“Some of those people came up to me and said, ‘you know what? We need business people. I like the fact that you’re an engineer. Our roads need to improve and they need to be widened. … And I like the fact that you’re going to be on the Board of Commissioners.’ So, I think the seniority thing is only important to the senior members.”

Currently, Commissioner Kelly is the most senior member of the board (first elected in 1992) and remains the liaison to the Engineering Department and co-liaison to the Finance Department with Commissioner Gary Quinn.

The department liaisons were decided during a recent political caucus meeting between the incumbent commissioners, which Sadeghi had not been invited to participate in.

Nevertheless, Sadeghi said he would do the best job he could do as liaison to the departments he was assigned.

“Maybe I’ll see some improvements that we can make with, you know, the Board of Social Services,” he said.

He would continue to speak up when he disagreed with his colleagues, he said.

“The meetings are going to be a lot more entertaining,” Sadeghi quipped.